An Austrian microchip for every navigation system

Austrian tech company Photeon is developing the world’s first microchip to bring together every globally available GPS navigation standard.

Photeon Technologies is first and foremost a developer of chips for leading international semi-conductor manufacturers. The company, which was founded in 2000, currently employs some 40-50 developers, and their international team of engineers delivers entire projects from initial specification to finished chip for every leading chip manufacturer in the USA, Asia and Europe. The company is particularly focused on chip solutions used in the automotive and mobile phone sectors.

Proof of the company’s innovative capacity comes in the form of a large order from a leading Japanese systems manufacturer in which, for the first time in the world, all available navigation standards are collated on a small microchip around four millimetres square in size. Any positioning system can be used at any location on earth, thereby avoiding dependency on individual Networks.

The first prototypes should be available by the end of 2017. Photeon’s client has already successfully launched self-driving tractors and combine harvesters onto the market, and the new navigation chip will ensure that self-driving vehicles can be steered by satellite with accuracy measurable in centimetres. The chip is also intended for future use at the heart of self-driving vehicles around the world.